The Undead Pool. Kim Harrison

escaped me. This wasn’t enough, and uncaring of tomorrow, I slid from the stool. Our lips parted as he stumbled, and then I pulled him to me, arms going around him and up into his hair.

      I had spent the last three months looking at his hair, wondering what it would feel like in my fingers again. Three long months I’d watched him move, seen him in every possible piece of clothing and wondered what he’d look like out of them and how he might move against me when the darkness was velvet and the sheets were cool. Three months of saying no, be good, Rachel, be smart, Rachel.

      I wanted one damn kiss, and I was going to have it, by God.

      “You are fucking animals!” the woman at the table exclaimed, and when Trent’s lips threatened to slip from mine, I sent the barest dart of tongue past his lips to recapture his attention. It worked. His breath caught, and I swear the man growled. His arm crushed me to him, and it was all I could do to not wrap my legs around him. Bar stools could hold that much weight, right?

      “There are three dead vampires on my floor, and you are making out?”

      Energy darted between us, and breathless, I pulled back, the sound of our lips parting sparking through me. Trent’s eyes smoldered. I held their heat, tasting him on my lips. It wasn’t the vampire pheromones in here. It was three months of saying no.

      “Relax,” I said to her, never dropping Trent’s gaze. My heart was pounding, and I still didn’t care about tomorrow. “Only one of them is dead, and I think she’s going to make it. You probably won’t even have any jail time.”

      “Jail time! They tried to blood rape me!”

      “Like I said. No jail time.”

      Trent was still silent, but he was smiling at the sound of boots and the flash of cop lights on the front sidewalk. The woman made a tiny sound and ran to unlock the door. We slowly parted, his hand slipping from me in a sensation of tingles. My smile faded as I looked at his hand and realized I’d never hold it again.

      That hadn’t been our first kiss, but it had been our last.

Six

      And there are no indications it will be any better tonight,” Edden said, his hand smacking the podium with a loud pop.

      My head snapped up at the sharp sound, but not before my chin slipped off my palm and I did a classic head bob. Jerked awake, I looked over the FIB’s shift change meeting to see if anyone had noticed. The dream of purple, angry eyes and spinning wheels lingered, and I thought I could still hear the sound of wings beating upon me in punishment.

      Sheepish, I resettled myself. I wasn’t surprised I’d nodded off, having come in early to the FIB to first fill out a report about the bar incident and, second, to get my car out of impound. Sleep had been a few hours on the couch, fitful and not enough of it. Coffee had lost its punch, and a vending machine no-doze charm wasn’t going to happen. Those things could kill you, especially now, maybe. It was starting to become really clear what might be going on, and even though there were more questions than answers, it didn’t look good.

      Edden was up front between a podium and a big map hanging from the dry erase board. The city was cordoned off like one of Ivy’s maps, little red stickers showing vampire crimes, blue ones the misfired charms. There was an obvious pattern to the misfired charms, but the vampire crimes were widespread within the confines of Cincy and the Hollows, with no recognizable linkage to the sporadic waves other than they seemed to start at the same time.

      Edden was hiding a smirk, clearly having caught my head bob, but his voice never faltered. There were rows of officers between me and him, and you could tell which officers were going off shift by the fatigue.

      “I need some coffee,” I whispered to Jenks, tickling the roof of my mouth with my tongue to try to wake up.

      “Yeah, me too,” he said, rising up with an odd blue dust. “You know what they say. You can tell a human by how many meetings he has. I’ll be back. I gotta get me some of that honey.”

      “Honey!” I whispered, but he was gone, flying right down the center aisle and turning heads as he went for the coffee urn set to the side at the front of the room. Oh God, he was going to get drunk, right when I was trying to show them all how professional I was.

      “We’re all pulling the occasional double shift until we’re sure this is over,” Edden said as Jenks saluted him and landed by the little packets of honey there for the tea drinkers.

      “Captain,” one of the more round officers complained as a general air of discontent rose.

      “No exceptions, and don’t trade with anyone,” Edden said, then hesitated as Jenks stabbed a honey packet with his sword, his dust shifting to a brilliant white when he pulled a pair of chopsticks from a back pocket and started eating. “Rose is doing the schedule so no one gets two nights in a row. I say again—no trading.”

      The officers not griping were watching Jenks, and the pixy looked up, his chopsticks lifted high over his head as the honey dribbled into him. “What?” he said, his dust cutting off in a reddish haze. “You never seen a pixy before? Listen to Edden. I’m eating here.”

      Edden cleared his throat and stepped from the podium. “As for our last item, I know it was a rough night, but before you go, I’d like those of you who dealt with something . . . ah, of an Inderland nature to share what you did and how it worked for those coming on shift.”

      “Inderland nature,” an older cop with a raspy voice and belligerent attitude complained. “I was almost eaten last night.”

      Snickering, Jenks dribbled more honey into his mouth, but I didn’t see anything funny. Whether he knew it or not, the craggy officer probably wasn’t exaggerating.

      “I didn’t see you complaining at the time,” said the cop next to him, and the first officer turned to stare him down.

      “Callahan!” Edden said, shouting over the sudden ribbing. “Since you volunteered. Let’s hear what happened on your Inderlander encounter and how you dealt with it.”

      “Well, sir, I believe the woman bewitched me,” he said slowly. “My partner and I were responding to a misfired charm up by the zoo when we spotted two suspects outside a window, trying to break in. I politely asked them if they had lost their keys. They ran; we followed. One got away. When I tried to apprehend the other, she got all . . . sexy like.”

      Hoots and whistles rose, and Jenks, deep into his honey drunk, gyrated wildly.

      “Eyes black and coming on to me like one of those legalized prostitutes down in the Hollows,” he continued. “It was enough to embarrass a man.”

      Jenks almost spun right off the table and I hid my eyes, mortified.

      “I don’t see an arrest,” Edden said as he leafed through a clipboard.

      “You get yourself some vampire ass, Callahan?” someone shouted, and the man cracked an almost-not-there grin.

      “When I turned around, she was gone,” Callahan said.

      A woman made a long “awwww,” and I smiled. They had a good group. I missed that.

      “She wasn’t going to bang you, she was going to smack you into next week,” I said, and Edden hid a cough behind rubbing his mustache. “That is, if you were lucky.”

      Callahan turned in his chair to give me an irritated look. “And you would know how?”

      I shrugged, glad everyone was looking at me and not Jenks making a wobbly flight to the podium. “Because when a vampire gets sexy, they’re either hungry or mad. Cornering her was a mistake. You’re lucky. You must have left her an out. She was smart and took it.”

      They were silent. Slowly the tension rose. But I wasn’t going to keep my mouth shut if a little information might keep someone out of the hospital.

      “Everyone,